Sultan Mohammed Munadi

The New York Times

September 9, 2009, in an area near Kunduz, Afghanistan

Munadi and Times colleague
Stephen Farrell were kidnapped by the Taliban on September 5. Munadi was shot four days later during
a British military rescue mission that freed Farrell, a British-Irish national. Farrell told the Times he did
not know the source of fire that killed the Afghan journalist. The Times reported that the British
decision to attempt the rescue came after Afghan government agents learned that
the captors were planning to move the journalists into Pakistan.

The two men were abducted while covering the aftermath of a NATO raid on
two hijacked fuel tankers near Kunduz in which scores of Afghan civilians were
reportedly killed. Munadi was a well-respected Afghan reporter who had just
returned to the country for the presidential election held in August. He had
been studying in Germany for
a master’s degree in public policy and had been a long-time reporter for
the Times and other
publications.

Farrell said the two were given food, water, and blankets,
and were not harmed while they were being held. But he said that Munadi
was taunted by the kidnappers, who told him to remember the case of Ajmal
Naqshbandi, an Afghan reporter who was beheaded after being taken by the
Taliban in Helmand province in
2007.

Munadi’s remains were not recovered by the British rescue
team. British military authorities released few details about the mission and
did not respond to inquiries from CPJ seeking information about the circumstances
of his death, whether his rescue was an objective of the mission, or whether the
troops had sufficient information to identify him as one of the captives.

Anger among Afghan journalists rose in the days after
Munadi’s death. On September 13, many of his colleagues signed a letter calling
on the Afghan government to undertake “serious and thorough investigations to
identify the perpetrators of this inhumane act.”

In November, CPJ called on British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown to undertake a thorough investigation into the rescue mission, noting
that many questions were left unanswered in the aftermath.